Book to tell of the pill’ with drama

Tuesday

Jun 18, 2013 at 6:00 AM

Dianne Williamson

A New York Times bestselling author has trained his sights on “a team of rebels” whose medical breakthrough here in the 1950s would change women’s lives.

Many of us are aware that the birth control pill was the most important development to emerge from the Worcester area. But few know the fascinating history behind its creation, and the brilliant team that bucked convention to make it possible.

That should change with the publication of “The Man Who Invented Sex: A Story of Love, Genius, and the Creation of the Birth Control Pill.” Due to be published next year, the book will focus on the men whose efforts to develop the pill were bankrolled by two women who understood what a difference it would make to the world.

“It’s a fascinating subject,” said author Jonathan Eig of Chicago. “In those days it was illegal to use or even disseminate information about birth control. There was a great stigma. Scientifically it was impossible, and no one knew if anyone would even manufacture it. It was a team of rebels who pulled this off.”

His book will focus on biologist Gregory Pincus, who had been let go by Harvard after his work on in-vitro fertilization was deemed too controversial, Eig said. He had “nothing to lose” when he came to Worcester, at one point running a lab in an old barn on the Clark University campus and even living with his parents on the grounds of the old Worcester State Hospital.

“He was desperate,” Eig said. “People wrote about him like he was Frankenstein.”

His work was funded by women’s rights crusader Margaret Sanger, a former nurse, and biologist Katharine Dexter McCormick, heiress to a large fortune. The combined genius of Pincus, Dr. John Rock and Min-Chueh Chang flourished at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, which started at Clark in 1943 and moved to Shrewsbury four years later. Their goal was to develop a convenient substance that could block ovulation. It was Chang who discovered that progesterone was the key, and after working with lab animals they turned to human testing.

This part of the story is rather shocking today. According to Eig, the scientists experimented on “dozens” of female patients in the early 1950s at Worcester State Hospital without their consent, injecting them with progesterone and later testing whether they ovulated.

“It was illegal to give it to women, and the standards were very different then,” Eig said, adding that he interviewed a retired doctor who remembers administering the shots. Also, Some of Pincus’ records are preserved at the Library of Congress. One letter written to Pincus by doctors at Worcester State warn him of the potential dangers — to the researchers.

“... We wish to inform the directors that the working conditions in these laboratories after 10 p.m., when the night watchman finishes his rounds, are not safe,” it reads. “The laboratories are easily accessible to patients even when all the doors are locked.”

Eig is the author of three books: “Luckiest Man,” “Opening Day,” and, most recently, “Get Capone.” He has appeared on NBC’s Today Show, NPR, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

The author will be in Worcester July 1-3 and wants to interview anyone with stories or memories to share about the scientists. The late gynecologist Henry Kirkendall also injected some of his patients — with their consent — and Eig is eager to speak to any of those patients. His cell is (773) 991-8841.

“I love the idea that so much of this was going on in Worcester, instead of a big city like Boston,” Eig said. “They were operating under the radar. ... We tend to forget that the places we live and the streets we walk have pasts. And it’s all right there.”

He added, “We know the pill changed the world. But we really know nothing about how it came to be.”